Archive for December, 2013

“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.” –Ellen Goodman

A quick search on New Year’s Resolutions reveals roughly half of Americans bother to make them annually, some do it once in a while, and less than half of those resolutions are kept past the sixth month mark. Clearly even people who don’t make yearly resolutions at least think about them, and many write about them. So what is it that compels all the hoopla every year at this time?

Starting the New Year with some fresh habits that better support our life goals or our health is reasonable on the surface. But I suppose many years of living in places where January is cold, dark, snowy or wet, and not a time when I feel particularly bursting with excess energy has jaded my view of this practice. I also balk at the idea of forcing a change at this arbitrary point in the year, especially when the more natural time for making changes for me is springtime.

I think winter is a great time to contemplate change and perhaps to make sure I get back to any changes I made last year that may have reverted to old ways during the holidays amidst stress and all kinds of distractions. Habits I already worked to change but just weren’t quite my go-to during the busy holiday season are much easier to tackle in January than a completely new thing. For me, the long, dark evenings (and early mornings) are perfect for introspection and planning. As it turns out, planning is also pretty important for sustainable changes.

For me Spring is a natural season for changes, full of renewal and rebirth in the natural world, snow and ice melt here in the valley, buds appear on the trees, baby Bison wander the northern meadows. More hours of daylight and warmer temperatures lighten my mood and I feel more energized. By springtime I have also given thought to meaningful changes and perhaps even taken a few preliminary steps to get the ball rolling.

You may prefer summer or autumn to make changes – maybe you need lots of sunshine or impending winter to nudge you toward change. And sometimes we don’t get to choose when to change. A medical diagnosis or life event may motivate or necessitate change with no luxury of waiting until the time is just right.

As the New Year approaches if you do decide to make a change, here are some key basics to set yourself up for success – and to me that means a change that is sustainable.

Understand your motivation to change. Is the change something you want to do or what someone else wants you to do (a spouse, doctor, friend, etc.). Are you clear about the benefits involved and will the change be a reward by itself? If not you may want to set up rewards along the path to change to keep you going.

Consider all possible barriers to change. Know what you are up against then you can plan accordingly. We are all part of different groups – families, friends, co-workers, church, community, etc. and any changes in our everyday habits can be supported or sabotaged by those around us.

Make a plan and be specific about how you will move forward. Vague statements like “eat more vegetables” are difficult to plan for, implement and measure – all ways we determine our success or failure. Planning will help you assess any skills, tools, knowledge, and support that will help you be successful.

Seek or at least allow support from others for your change. The idea of being a solo badass is alluring to many of us. “Just Do It.” We subconsciously or outwardly buy into the myth that asking for any kind of help means we are weak. The reality is that we all need help sometimes and asking for it is hard. Really hard sometimes. People who care about you want to support you, so let them and increase the chance of successful change.

Tired of the same old holiday nutrition tips that promote a focus on calories, fat grams, weight gain, and other negative consequences of dietary indiscretion, here are some ideas that fit more with the Beyond Broccoli nutrition philosophy and approach.

Be kind to yourself. This does not replace the giving to others we emphasize during the holiday season – compassion for others is linked to self-compassion. You cannot give what you don’t have and you take the best care of what you love. You do the best you can and that is enough.

Check in with why you are eating. The holiday season presents endless opportunities to graze mindlessly. Sometimes the simple question “what do I really need/want right now?” can stop or at least make you aware of eating for non-hunger reasons (emotions, environment, peer pressure).

Eat slowly and intentionally. Identify pleasing flavors and textures in the food you eat and give your brain the 20 minutes it needs to identify fullness. It helps to eat sitting down with minimal distractions (not an easy task for many of us!).

Notice how your body feels after you eat. This primitive instinct once let us know which foods (or amounts of food) caused digestive discomfort so we could avoid (or eat less of) the food the next time. Understanding which foods nourish our bodies best can empower us to make better choices.

Eat regularly throughout the day. When we go too long without eating we set ourselves up to overeat. This is basic biology – part of our hard-wired survival instincts, now mismatched with our abundant food supply. If you are going to a holiday dinner or party in the evening you can make healthier food choices during the day, but skipping meals and arriving at your special occasion ravenous is not a good idea.

Stay hydrated. Our need for fluid increases with many environmental extremes including hot, cold, dry and high altitude. Many of us are conscious about drinking more water when it’s hot but forget we need more when it’s cold and/or dry too. Soups and hot tea are great ways to increase fluid on cold days.

Strive to include joyful movement in your busy holiday schedule. Physical activity can take many forms – find ways to move that you enjoy and you are more likely to keep this as part of your holiday self-care regimen. Forcing yourself to squeeze in a gym session can create more stress than it relieves. Dance at holiday parties, acknowledge that holiday shopping and cleaning are opportunities to be active and “count” as physical activity.

Savor food you perceive as special treats. Choose your special treat foods, knowing that in our modern world most foods are available any time of year so identify the truly special foods for you. Notice that when you give yourself permission to eat and savor these foods you may “need” less of them to feel satisfied.

Shared meals provide benefits beyond physical nourishment. Food connects us as humans – we all must eat to live. There is research that supports many benefits of family meals. Taking time to share meals during the holiday season can help us feel grounded, connected to each other, and in charge of our lives vs. stressed out about how out-of-control this season can get.

Remember to breathe. Deep breathing has many benefits, especially related to stress resilience. Stress is an inevitable part of life and our ability to work through stressful moments or events is important for many reasons, including the ability to not use food as an antidote. Just 3 deep “belly breaths” can change the blood flow in your brain from your “fight or flight” response to your more “rational” thinking.

Last week kicked off the holiday season with our celebration of Thanks. I love the simplicity of Thanksgiving – gather with family, friends, or neighbors to celebrate what we are grateful for and share good food. However, the irony of this day of thanks followed by the biggest shopping day on the American calendar is not lost on me, nor is the fact that we spend the rest of the holiday season focused on what we don’t have or what others don’t have (the latter to guide our giving). It seems that despite our gratitude for what we have, somehow there is never enough of something.

I am reminded of Brene Brown’s gem of a book The Gifts of Imperfection in which she writes about cultivating a gratitude practice to counter our feelings of scarcity. She points out ways that we buy into the myth of scarcity, often subconsciously. In our society, despite abundant resources relative to other parts of the world or other times in human history, many of us focus on the ways we don’t have enough, can’t get enough, or just are not enough.

We don’t get enough sleep, exercise, recognition for our hard work, or vegetables (couldn’t resist). We don’t have enough time, power, love, or money. We aren’t attractive, thin, fit, smart, or rich enough. These everyday thoughts and feelings of lacking something (or lots of things) keep us searching, both consciously and unconsciously to fill a void, real and imagined.

The reality is, many of these things may be true, at least on the surface. We may not have enough money to pay all of our bills on time or to buy the perfect gift for a loved one, and it’s no secret that lots of Americans are sleep-deprived. But the continued focus on what we lack in every aspect of our lives is not helpful, even if it is true.

Balancing thoughts of what we lack with thoughts of what we have, and more importantly what we are grateful for in ourselves and in others, may help us fill this void. No, positive thoughts don’t directly pay our bills and this isn’t some hippie notion like “love will conquer all” (though love is a great start). In fact ignoring discomfort leads to a host of issues beyond the scope of this blog post. But unless we take a closer look at what we actually have, it is difficult to accurately assess what we really need.

So how does all of this relate to nutrition? Well, it turns out that one of the ways many of us try to “fill” this inner void is by eating (or not eating – food restriction is another way to numb, distract or ignore emotional pain and discomfort).

Now Brene Brown and others who write about perceived scarcity and the benefits of cultivating a gratitude practice don’t frame this practice specifically as a way to address emotional eating (compulsive overeating, binge eating, or eating when feeling any number of emotions and not physically hungry). But I wonder what could happen if we try to focus daily on what we are grateful for, even in some small way. I understand the challenge of starting something new during the insanely busy holiday season but I don’t think this needs to be super time-consuming or complicated (see below for ideas).

I also realize this is an emotionally difficult time of year for many of us who have experienced losses. Though it has been nearly 20 years since my Dad died, his love of all things Christmas still makes me sad at random times throughout this season. It is clear to me though, focusing on the loss and sadness isn’t helpful anymore. However, focusing on how grateful I am for my memories of Dad, even if they make me feel sad, is intriguing to me. Will this somehow help mindless munching I do while not conscious that I am feel an emptiness? I don’t know but I think it’s worth a try.

It does occur to me however, that it may be better to not immediately try to counter feelings of sadness, emptiness, or other emotional discomfort with thoughts about gratitude since the idea is not to invalidate our feelings. I think it may be better to set aside a time to practice gratitude, and to allow thoughts of gratitude to naturally surface at other times but perhaps pay slightly more attention to these thoughts. Say them out loud or share them with someone close to you.

Perhaps if we all try to notice when we are falling into thoughts and feelings of scarcity, and acknowledge what we are grateful for more consistently and consciously, we may not feel a need to fill ourselves with food when what we need or want has nothing to do with food.

So let’s try an informal cultural experiment. If you struggle with any variety of emotional eating, try to somehow incorporate a gratitude practice for even a few minutes each day and see what happens. If you want to, you can come back to this post and let us know how the experiment went for you or you can email me privately (mary@beyondbroccoli.com).

Here are some ideas from people who practice gratitude:

Start a gratitude journal – each morning or evening write down at least one thing you are grateful for. Doesn’t need to be fancy, a small memo pad works just fine.

Create a gratitude jar in which you write thoughts related to gratitude that come up throughout your day on little pieces of paper and put the pieces of paper in the jar.

Begin shared meals with each person at the table sharing something they are grateful for.

Use prayer or meditation to reflect on what makes you feel gratitude.

Meanwhile, I am grateful for all of you who read my ramblings. I hope the holiday season is off to a good start for all of you and that you know – you are enough in all of the ways that matter.